"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
- Albert Camus
All But the Blue Heron ©1985 LSAuth.
My Princeton life was somewhat monastic—at least in the first year of 1984. After filing several applications for teaching positions in various local art centers, I set my focus on creating a body of work for an art show which was scheduled to open in Chicago the following year of 1985. It was to be a show of my 3-D figures. I had also received a 6 week artist residency 30 miles north of Chicago which spanned the time of this exhibit. As I looked forward to these events in the ensuing months, I was acutely aware of how much I missed Chicago.
In the Clearing ©1985 LSAuth.
In the meantime, nature beckoned outside my studio window. Princeton had these dark & lovely, leaf-lined paths through the Institute Woods, and I walked into them almost every day. This is when I saw my first GreatBlue heron wading in a pond in the clearing, and many songbirds of which I was to learn the names over the next few months. Families of ravens & herds of deer were always indignant over my coming upon their thievery in the fallow corn fields where my woods walk terminated.
Princeton Crows & Corn ©1985 LSAuth.
Reluctantly, I had to turn around and go back home to work. Often, I would find some treasure that caught my eye lying on the understory: a fragile chrysalis, or a whitened, sere & delicate, animal bone, or a perfectly gnarled tree branch. I would take these gifts home with me — models to draw & paint or to incorporate into my figurative assemblages. Although I was often solitary, I was never lonely.
Keepers of the Corn ©1985 LSAuth.